Fujimi Ferrari F355 Berlinetta (yellow)

[Merkur XR4Ti]

Fujimi just reissued their Ferrari F355 Berlinetta kit, 74 parts, molded in yellow and black. Mine arrived from HLJ yesterday. It appears to be a straight reissue of the earlier kit molded in red. That means body side coves still molded as separate pieces (which will require tedious sanding), hood vents still molded closed, and a separate piece that needs to be glued in the rear valance.

The interior is a bucket and the door panels have no detail whatsoever. This won't be much of a problem for me as I'm going to keep the interior black, but for those wanting to use leather or lighter colors the lack of detail will be obvious. It's disappointing, but not surprising, that Fujimi didn't make any changes to the kit from the first release. If you can locate a Maisto discast kit of the 355 Spyder you can snag the door panels from that for this model if you want the additional detail.

All that being said, the body looks nice and with some minor tweaks the kit should build up well. I also purchased the Accu-Station photoetch set with the kit and the pieces look beautiful.

[Zoom Zoom]

I built an earlier version of the kit, from before the "retool" where they gave no door panels. My kit has the F355 dash but 348 door panels. I fudged painting the 348 door panels to look good w/the dash.

Things to be aware of on all of them: Do away (fill) w/the engraved molding on the body above the side glass. It's not supposed to be there, and ends at the rear quarter glass. So many build the model and paint it, it's offset and looks horrible. Just look at a photo of the real car and simplify that area.

Spend time molding in the side scoops and rescribing the front door cut. I cut the engine cover off the model entirely, then removed the blanked-in cooling louvers (by Dremel/sanding), and did some rescribing of the cut line area. I then reattached it and then molded in the separate part of the rear spoiler. It's a royal PITA. Fujimi fixed this area on the Spyder, it's engine cover area/rear spoiler is much better.

Maisto makes F355's, good source for door panels.

The F355 Challenge car has pathetically undersized wheels/tires. If the model only looked as nice as the boxart.

[robertw]

Bob's suggestions are right on. I've built both the spyder and the berlinetta. I'm also one of those who mistakenly left the trenches above the side glass. Can't explain why I missed this because I had lots of references but by the time I realized my mistake it was too late to correct.

The side scoops are, as suggested, a real pain but time must be spend blending them in.

I cut the cooling slots on the rear deck, without cutting out the deck but did rescribe the deck lines. I added PE metal mesh beneath the slots (MCG#2258) which pretty much eliminated my concern that you would see that there was no engine below.

The interior needs the most work. I scratchbuilt new inner doors, extended the footwells slightly, separated the headrests from the seats, scratchbuilt new drivers gauge clusters, scribed the airbag outline onto the passenger side dash plus did other little enhancements. The steering wheel is also wrong, being from the 348, and I replaced it with one from the Lindberg '97 Sebring. After some modifications it's much closer in appearance to the airbag equipped one in the 355.

For an accurate 355 find some references before you start your work. Forza Magazine has had some good articles on the 355 but even checking out the web should provide cars for sale that will have useful photos.

Good luck on your build, the 355 is probably my favorite Ferrari.

Rob W